I'm running a RTX 2070A in a PCIe3 x4 slot through the PCH and don't see any appreciable degradation of Performance under Ubuntu 18.04.4. It is connected via the 2nd m.2 slot in an x570 motherboard with a Ryzen 2000-series processor so the connection between the CPU and Chipset is PCIe3 x4. But the only other things on the connection are the Keyboard, mouse and the SATA SSD so not too much contention.CaptainHalon wrote:... but also what concerns me is when two slots are running x16 and x4, then the latter lanes are going through the PCH rather than directly to the CPU. With x8/x8, the lanes are strictly CPU lanes. Now whether or not the PCH introduces significant latency, I'm not sure.
When I tested Windows I saw a 5-10% decrease in performance on this GPU.
WRT to Linux Distributions ... Most people use Debian-based distributions (Ubuntu, Mint) so picking one of those will give you a larger pool of folks who can help.
I use Ubuntu for all my folding Rigs but do system management using a terminal (SSH) from Windows and Folding is managed using HfM.net and the Advanced client from Windows as well.